EPISODE 111
Mike Willever of Active Self Protection,
Host of the asp podcast
Mike is a retired Special Agent from Homeland Security Investigations who also worked as a local cop back in the day. Now Mike hosts the ASP Podcast where he deep-dives critical self-defense encounters from both the civilian and public safety worlds. We compare and contrast federal and local law enforcement, and then we talk about some of the aggregate trends and lessons from the interviews he’s done since he started the podcast for Active Self Protection.
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Intro music credit Bensound.com
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Recent Episodes
The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword… sometimes
This episode explores why communication is not a soft skill—but a core professional competency. Mike and Jim break down how narratives form, spread, and harden in high-stress environments, and why organizations that fail to tell their own story often lose control of it. From each of their own real-world experiences, they show how storytelling affects trust, cooperation, and institutional survival.
Closing the Gaps: Building Competence in High Performing-Teams
In high-stakes professions, the things you don’t see can hurt you. In this episode, Mike and Jim break down how gaps and blind spots develop in training, operations, and leadership—often without anyone realizing it. They dive into cognitive load, skill decay, mismatched expectations, and why even good training pipelines struggle to produce consistent results.
I’m new to your podcast but listened to episode 111- I’m a woman who has been assaulted but have since learned so much through physical and mental training. Raised in an Air Force family.
Kudos to Mike the former peer counselor. Wow- I could feel his genuine emotion for the topic and wanted to say thank you to him, and men like him who are real men with a sense of morality. Far too rare.
TL